They had lodged with him at Long Street in London, where they had given lessons in acting, elocution, and music; and Pantalzar clearly remembered the lad Rogers as a constant visitor at the house, partly in the capacity of a promising student of the dramatic art, and partly as a hopeless lover of his preceptor's wayward daughter.
After a year, his troubles in the latter capacity were abruptly cut short by the illness and death of the young lady; a blow which staggered the parents and broke up the establishment at Long Street.

It failed, however, to drive Rogers from the party, who, with a romantic loyalty, attached himself to the fortunes of the old people, and became like a son to them in their distresses.
Eventually the bereaved family migrated to Paris, whence Pantalzar had once heard from the father, who had found employment as stall manager of a third-rate theatre in one of the _fauxbourg_.

Hither Roger tracked him, and after dogged search, often baffled, sometimes apparently hopeless, discovered some one who remembered the reputed son of the old couple, who, as far as this witness could remember, was thought to have hired himself out as billiard-marker in an hotel in one of the southern suburbs of the city.
Thus far he had succeeded when he wrote home.

What transpired subsequently, and how he dropped for a season out of all knowledge, the reader already knows.
The suspense occasioned by his sudden disappearance, as may be imagined, added a new element of wretchedness to the situation at Maxfield.
Telegrams, letters, inquiries, alike failed to discover his whereabouts or the secret of his silence.

As post after post came and brought neither message nor tidings, the hearts of the watchers grew sick.